Thoughts From The Corner

August 22, 2012

Books have always been a large part of my life. Looking back there seems an inevitability in me becoming a private English tutor and plying my trade because of my book knowledge. The road may have been winding and at times undulating but it isn’t only the ‘being there’ that counts.

From Enid Blyton to William Shakespeare, I can only marvel at the wisdom of Emperor Tai Cong to put so succinctly (some 1,000 years ago) what would take me a whole blog post to say!

Open a book and you are profited

At primary school there was a chest full of books that appeared in our classroom every Friday afternoon. When I say ‘chest’ I mean exactly that. A ‘Robinson Crusoe‘, ‘Treasure Island‘ type of chest that sparked my imagination. The weekly appearance and opening of the chest led me into a magical kingdom somewhat reminiscent of walking into and exiting through the other side of the wardrobe into the land of Narnia. Thinking back, there were no Chronicles of Narnia in the chest (I wonder why that was?), I came to those later in life, as an adult. I don’t feel I had a deprived childhood because of the lack of adventures with Edmund and Lucy but they are definitely gems that all children should experience.

The Chronicles of Narnia (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

The chest started off in the ‘B’ class and was brought into our ‘A’ class by two of the ‘B’ pupils. We didn’t have too much to do with the ‘B’ class because, after all. they were the ‘thickies’! There was always a competition between some of the boys to see who could read the most books. It was obvious that some didn’t actually read them, they simply took them home on one Friday and brought them back the next. This always produced arguments but I guess boys will be boys!

I used to take my book home and devour it over the weekend. Enid Blyton was everyone’s favourite, so this meant that it wasn’t always easy to get one of her books from the chest – often they had all gone when it was your turn to pick a book.

Not taking Enid Blyton home for the weekend was always a disappointment but I was to learn later in life, in a Business Studies Economics class, that it was simply ‘demand exceeding supply’. Looking back, Enid Blyton was far more interesting than Economics. My path to being a home English tutor was laid many moons ago. . .

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